Sunday, May 06, 2007

Progressions X hit 300,000 pageviews today! And this week I've lettered pages 1-17 of "The Appearance of Respectability" and drawn five Progressions X pinups to start posting on Monday.

Since the final Progressions X story finished last week, and Chastity Towers won't begin for another month, what I've decided to do is to draw a series of pinups focusing on a different fetish each week. The first week covers facials, and I've drawn closeup portraits of Pam Sage, Mad Morello, Ariane Usher, Jane Cutler and a combined pic of Ariane and Isabel.

Instead of Prog-X's regular update schedule of several pages on Monday, these portraits are going to post each day from Monday through Friday. Next week will cover a different topic, and so on, until Chastity Towers begins. Who knows, I may continue doing something similar even after Chastity Towers starts. It's fun and they're full color! So it's been a great exercise in doing more color.

(WARNING: Not safe for work (NSFW) discussion follows.)

Speaking of color, I learned quite a bit about doing fetish artwork from doing this series of pinups. Obviously when the subject matter that's fetishized is a woman's face covered in semen, the way the cum is rendered makes a big difference to whether it's an appealing image or not. And if that sort of thing isn't a particular fetish of yours, it's going to look ridiculous anyway!

In this case I tried about half a dozen different ways of rendering the cum until finally settling on what ended up being the simplest way to do it AND the most effective. The drawings are done in a stylized cartoon method with thick black lines and fairly flat colors, but I started out working on nearly photo-realistic renderings of the shapes, color and texture of the semen. That just looked freaky, so I tried mixing the realistic coloring with black outlines and that still didn't work.

What I was trying to do was based on the way it looks in real life--our brain wants cum to be WHITE, but in most cases it's translucent and reflective, so it's got a lot of variety in color, especially depending on the skin color underneath it. So I was trying to stay faithful to that reality, and finding that it was just not working against the cartoon style of the portraits.

I then decided to reduce it to three colors--a base color, a white highlight, and a darker shadow. I really wanted it to be shiny and get that highlight, but I found that in every case, if I made the base color dark enough to make the highlight apparent, it didn't look like what it was supposed to be. It just looked like a grey or tan fluid, and that was not right at all.

So finally I stripped out the highlight and colored it with a single near-white base color and a simple shadow along the edges. This gave it exactly the kind of volume it needed, it was consistent with the cartooning style of the portraits and communicated exactly what was necessary to the brain.

In the end it was the absolute simplest way possible to do it, but I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't gone through all those steps first.


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Monday, September 04, 2006

Introducing: Progressions X

Stephen Greenwood-Hyde and I are proud to announce the launch of our
new series, Progressions X, on Joey Manley's www.adultwebcomics.com!

Progressions X is the erotic adventures of the denizens of Minerva
City, a tijuana-bible spinoff of www.progressions.org in which the
only constant is that the clothes will inevitably come off.

http://www.progressions.org/x/

It began as a lark years ago when I decided to draw a pornographic
version of a short Progressions minicomic I had just finished, but it
became a tradition where each new Progressions story would receive its
own erotic version, each more depraved than the last.

Progressions has been running on Webcomics Nation, which has limits on
adult content, but thanks to the newly-launched Adult Webcomics we
finally have a home on the web for the basest and most salacious
stories we can create!

Progressions X will be updating weekly, with new installments of 3-5
pages every Monday.

It is our view that pornography, like kung fu, is best served with a
minimum of plot and an emphasis on action and we hope to satisfy that
requirement with Progressions X! We hope you'll give it a look and
pass it on to your more open-minded friends. Of course, conservative
condemnation and cries for censorship are also welcome, as are
complaints that Progressions X represents solid evidence of the
downfall of civilization as we know it. That kind of thing always
boosts ratings!

Thanks!

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Wednesday, October 05, 2005

The Grandaddy of the outerspace blues fable

Well, I'll be damned. Jeff Coleman and Stephen Greenwood-Hyde are serializing Spark Tower Wilson's Silent Song at webcomicsnation.

This comic is incredible. Give it a few weeks, until they've got enough pages up so that you're actually reading something, and then go show it all the love you can.


Discovered Dan Carroll mentioned us on his blog. For those who don't know, Dan Carroll was the inspiration behind "Spark-Tower Wilson's Silent Song" in the first place. He ran a webcomics site called "E-volution", and recruited us to do an original story for it. We brainstormed something unique for the web and came up with "Spark-Tower" as a result. So for that, thanks Dan!

Jeff

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Sunday, September 25, 2005

Big Things: PROGRESSIONS at Ninth Art

Slackers, groupies and gangsters, oh my! PROGRESSIONS creators Jeff Coleman and Stephen Greenwood-Hyde step off the third-and-a-half rock from the sun, and into the Ninth Art spotlight.

We're the latest feature in the BIG THINGS article at comics culture and commentary site Ninth Art. "Big Things" focuses on up-and-coming creators and gives us a chance to show off our stuff.

:)

Jeff

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Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Today was a good day

So far today:

It's my birthday, I got a job, I'm back in touch with one old friend and another friend gave us some words of kind regard. I gotta say it was a good day.

So I'm 34 years old today. It constantly fascinates me that some people have anxiety over getting older. I had fun when I was younger too, but thinking about it, so many great things have happened to me in any given year that I couldn't imagine asking to turn back the clock to a time before they happened.

My sister Stacey has two children that are cute and smart and adorable, she has a great husband and she's practically a rock star at her job, they love her so much and she's so good at it. If I turned back the clock five years the kids wouldn't be born and Stacey's situation would be completely different.

Stephen and I have come a long way on Progressions, publishing hundreds of pages of comics and creating our first full-color graphic novel, setting up our proper website and making lots of friends in the business. If I turned back the clock seven years and I'd still be toiling at the Joe Kubert School, being taught narrative art by fat guys whose credentials consist of "cut bristol board for Adam Kubert in the basement of his father's school" and who spends most of every Monday's class drooling about how hot Buffy the Vampire Slayer looked on the latest episode.

I live in New York City, the greatest city on Earth. Turn back the clock ten years and I'd still be Austin, Texas, which--fair enough--is a great city, but I couldn't imgaine going back now. After spending two years in Paris from '89 to 91 I knew I was going to want to live in a big city. The bigger the better--New York, Paris, London, Hong Kong... plus the movies of Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola helped seal the deal and draw me to Manhattan.

I'm 34 now and I've come a long way in my art, studying cartooning, expression, narrative, black-and-white, color, iconography, rhythm, page layout, and just devoting almost every waking moment to absorbing ways of telling stories and communicating visually. Turn back 15 years and I was 19 years ago, with loads of passion and drive but it was all theory. Stephen and I were conceiving Progressions as a comic and we had a script written but I wasn't drawing it. And even after I moved back to Texas from Paris it would sitll take me several years to get started on my long-running minicomic effort "Drug Abuse Is Fun". That was basically a workshop for me to get in practice cartooning, until Stephen and I could find a way to start Progressions.

We didn't realize that the way you start Progressions is basically, to just "start Progressions". That simple, basic fact of life would take five or six more years to even occur to us. We're brilliant but we never claimed to be clever.

Turn back the clock twenty years and I'm in high school, and lord knows I could do without reliving that. In fact, in 1985, WATCHMEN hadn't even come out yet and rekindled the fire of profound narratives in my mind--I was still in the limbo between reading Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Alpha Flight, drawing made-up superhero/funny animal/computer game parody comics like "Game Quak", and being introduced to comics like ZOT!, WATCHMEN, CEREBUS and THE SPIRIT. It was a fine place to be at the time, but not somewhere I'd want to go now.

So yes, I'm quite happy to be 34 and I pretty much feel like I'm in exactly where I'm supposed to be--things in my life are far from perfect but much progress has been made (no pun intended) and it's an exciting time to be alive.

I got a job. I'm still looking for something more permanent that can bring in some income while we develop Progressions, but I've got a temporary assignment starting on Monday that should last for about a month. I've been jobless for a while which has made it tough to get back in the game--employers tend to want things like "references" and answers to the question "what the hell have you been doing with your time?" I'd been working through a temp agency and I'd done a lot of interviews in the last few months, none of which had paid off. It was frustrating as hell and today I was in the process of making calls to every other agency I could find, looking for SOMEBODY who could place me, when they let me know this position was available.

Also today (late last night/early this morning) I got back in touch with one of the most talented people I know, Jeff Iftekarrudin. He's a songwriter, guitarist, budding billionaire and just all-around great guy. Check out his site and listen to some cool music.

And lastly, Kieron Gillen gave us a great writeup about Spark-Tower Wilson over at his blog. Kieron's a games journalist and comics writer with a thoughtful, intelligent style and a sensibility about pop (both "pop" as an independent concept and "pop music" on its own) that I dig. For a while I just thought of him as "the only other person in the world that knows who Shampoo are"*, but then we started communicating and I drew a story for him.
The story's called "Hit", it was one installment of a series of short standalone one-two comics punches. Strong, discrete concepts told in a few pages. Kieron has put our "Hit" collaboration back online for your edification and enjoyment.

Together with Charity Larrison, Kieron's also serializing a graphic novel: Busted Wonder, which is just beautiful and lyrical and quite a change of pace. Charming stuff and I can't wait to see where it goes.

*I just noticed that on Kieron's weblog the mouseover text for our page is a Shampoo quote. Nicely done, KG.

Jeff

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Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Spark-Tower Wilson video trailer


In celebration of the launch of Spark-Tower Wilson's Silent Song in October, we've created a video trailer for the story.

It's the first in a series of trailers that focus on what "Spark-Tower Wilson" is about: music and the blues, home and belonging, romance and love, and fathers and sons. This is our most sentimental story to date, which is why we call it an outerspace blues fable.

You can download the video trailer here:

Spark-Tower Wilson video trailer



High resolution version (9 MB WMV)
Low resolution version (2 MB WMV)

Enjoy!

Jeff

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Sunday, September 11, 2005

What is Spark-Tower Music?


Run-down industrial areas and their tired residential adjuncts. The neighbourhood where everyone knows everyone. The look that’s given to an outsider coming in, the look that’s given to an insider who’s leaving…

The blues. The feeling of leaving home. The implacable intrusion of adulthood into a young man’s relationship with his father. The romance against which all the odds are stacked…

That's Spark-Tower Music...




It was Winter of 2003...


I was visiting my family in Austin, Texas, and my sister Stacey invited me to a party at the lakehouse of a friend. The house was nestled into some deep woods beyond some twisty little gravel path. We were a small group and we ended up outside near the house, in a circle around a campfire.

We had a guitar and two of us passed it back and forth, playing songs and singing, showing each other what we could do and taking requests. He played country-inflected tunes with a twisted sense of humor and a beautiful voice. I played folk and pop songs ad some Brazilian bossanova--Dylan, The Cure, Antonio Carlos Jobim. My jazz chords impressed him, even though I only knew a couple of tunes in that style. His voice and songwriting impresed me--he played almost entirely originals.

I've played guitar since I was a senior in high school, and one of my favorite things to do is to sit with a group of friends and play. Sadly, it seemed to be a lot more common in Austin than it is in New York City--I can count on one hand the number of times it's happened since I moved up here seven years ago. I miss it.

Music is one of the most important themes in "Spark-Tower Wilson", and in the lives of millions of people. Do you have a live music story? A concert that changed your life? A friend or lover who wrote a song about you?

Tell us about it! Leave a comment below and let us know about how live music has touched your life.

In the meantime, here is the video trailer for Spark-Tower Wilson's Silent Song. It's 11 MB in the Windows Media Viewer format.

Jeff

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Thursday, September 01, 2005

"Skyline"

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Back online and Number One!

My DSL was connected yesterday, so I am back online at home, finally! No more using internet cafes and not being able to upload new art and all that!

I am currently working on getting ready for the launch of "Spark-Tower Wilson's Silent Song" at www.progressions.org! This original graphic novel was designed especially for the web and we will be serializing it over the new few months, updating every Monday. I'll post more about it soon!

Also, we are #1 at today's Webcomics Nation Top Ten! We're #7 on the All-Time Top Ten list and top of the heap for today! We appreciate all the support, keep it up!

Jeff

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Thursday, August 25, 2005

"Once a Gangster"!

The latest PROGRESSIONS story has been posted today--

"Once a Gangster":

In a shadowy world of winners and sinners, one rampant prankster pits his tricky brain and his witty style against the hard-boiled killers of the underworld!

One of our latest features is Authors' Notes for each issue, written by Stephen Greenwood-Hyde with some notes by me:

The challenging side of this story was that we’d only really flirted with this kind of comedy before, whereas this time we wanted to really get stuck in (so to speak). We used the HK style and references as a crutch to support us through our first major bout of slapstick, and as a result it’s kind of self indulgent on both our parts… but shit, even the big Hong Kong blockbusters have wonky plots, so I don’t really mind. Besides, it was this issue which gave us the confidence to try some new tricks on the next issue…

I've been without DSL in my new apartment for a week now, and they say they're turning it on next Friday. I'm cutting this note short because the keyboard at this internet cafe is crappy!

Jeff

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Thursday, August 11, 2005

From Zero to #1!

Thursday's installment of Progressions is up! The Psychobabes: From Zero to None! is about what happens when girl-group The Psychobabes tries to bring their upbeat pop style to the roughest dive in Minerva City.

Also, we've hit #1 on the Webcomics Nation Top Ten! We've been in the Top Ten consistently since we launched but this is our first day at the top!

Jeff

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Monday, August 08, 2005

Authors' Notes!

I just got a wallop of stuff in e-mail from Stephen, including the next few pages of script for our next story, "Journey 01", which just blew me away. It's a completely different style of writing and pacing than we've done before, and I am really looking forward to drawing it. Stephen's put a level of craft and precision into this script that is working on a whole new level for us.

I'm going to be doing some designs and layouts during this week before I start the actual drawing. I'm looking for a place to live, since I need to be out of my apartment in about a week. And I want to get moved before I start the drawing on "Journey".

The other great thing he sent was Authors' Notes for Progressions! I've converted them to HTML and got them up on the site now. They give some insight into what was going on behind-the-scenes of each issue.

Next up for me is the "photographs" from #11's Cineculture.

Here's who we have scheduled:
  • Fairweather
  • Bingo (from The Message)
  • Julius Bond (from Johnny Pink)


Jeff

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First week!

www.progressions.org has been up over a week now! Since Joey Manley launched Webcomics Nation last Friday, we've posted three stories, cast bios and an Encyclopedia Minerva!

We're well on schedule for the next few months, and today I have finished drawing the Cineculture pinup for Progressions #11. It will be appearing on the website in October but here's a peek.

The final pinup will be in color on the website and in grey tones in the minicomic.

Jeff

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Sunday, January 09, 2005

25 O'Clock

We've got a full plot now for "25 O'Clock", which we have tentatively decided will be the first story in the new Progressions minicomics, which will be coming out early this year.

"25 O'Clock" is a New Year's Eve story, in which Henry Anton and Pam Sage recount their adventures on the eve of Minerva City's bicentennial. It will be 16 pages, black and white and grey tones.

Stephen is working on the dialogue now, and I've been pacing it out into panel layouts, working out what to show and what angles to use and so on. There are some fun techniques in this story which make it a bit more complex than some of our others. Still, it fits in the same vein as "Skyline" from the minicomic, it's that kind of adventure.

The current plan is to finish "Dance Dance Resolution" first, then begin work on "25 O'Clock" and "1001 Vicious Blows", finishing those up during January and February. Then "25 O'Clock" will be the first minicomic we do in 2005, and we'd like to find a different venue to publish "Vicious Blows".

Once "Resolution", "25" and "Vicious" are complete, I'll begin work on Academy Angel, the first book of the Anton/Sage Mysteries, which will also be serialized in the minicomic and website.

Jeff

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Saturday, January 08, 2005

You say you want a resolution...


Our latest project is "Dance Dance Resolution", a 10-page black-and-white story for the Ronin Studios Tsunami Relief Anthology:

"Karmachand High School's queen of cool Pam Sage is having a bad day… and it's about to get worse! Strutting her stuff at Big Lou's Pop Nite, Pam finds herself confronted with one social disaster after another until her quest for dancefloor dominance sees her confront an old school rival in a deadly dancefloor duel! Can Pam throw the right shapes to prove her point? One thing's for sure - she needs some Dance Dance Resolution!"

We wanted to do something for the Anthology, but we didn't feel right about doing something maudlin or emotional. The majority of our Progressions work is designed to be light entertainment, so we decided on something fun and breezy, with cute girls in sexy costumes. We figured it's the least we can do.

In other news:

I've broken down Stephen's script for "1001 Vicious Blows" into 16 pages and designed the panel layouts, but won't start working on that until after "Resolution" is done. We aren't holding ourselves to a tight deadline on "Vicious Blows", I'll be doing it simultaneously with getting started on Academy Angel as well.

Unfortunately my Wacom tablet pen is broken now, and it could be a week or more before I get the replacement. I do all my art digitally so I am basically restricted to doing sketches and designs until it's replaced. Argh!

Jeff

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Thursday, December 30, 2004

Yearly tally

Let's see... inspired by Rafer Roberts' year-end tally I started thinking of my own.

36 pages co-written, drawn, inked, colored and lettered
8 pages drawn, inked and lettered

Leaving aside the various plotting that we are still working on, that's about it. The script for "1001 VICIOUS BLOWS" is almost finished and I'm working on layouts for that now, but won't start doing actual drawing until the New Year.

Likewise with ACADEMY ANGEL, the story is being developed now and drawing will begin on it after VICIOUS BLOWS.

Jeff

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Friday, October 22, 2004

Long lazy day

KG has just posted a
Flier for the London Comic Fest tomorrow, where Commercial Suicide will be launching.

In preparation for revamping the website, I'm starting to get re-acquainted with HTML and ASP again. I'd prefer to be using PHP since it has more curly brackets and looks kinda like Pascal, but I think my web server thingy only supports ASP.

Made a simple program to automate reading comic stories--a variation on the one we use now on www.progressions.org, although this one doesn't consult a database. I had a bunch of stories on the secret page where I keep all my art-in-progress, and I wanted to make it easier to read through them.

If you like, you can read through Death-Blow of the Miracle Masters by Stephen Greenwood-Hyde and me.

Or you can pick up Plastic Farm #2, where it originally appeared as a backup story.

Went to see THE GRUDGE today and found it passably scary, although basically it's just a haunted house story. Nothing that's going to stick with me, and I didn't find it near as visceral as THE RING. Much to the dismay of Stephen and my other more purist friends, I prefer the American version of The Ring, although I really don't see the point in a sequel. The idea itself is classic and, after the first film, what more can you say?

After a snarky comment from Jeff Chon about my Lindsay Lohan/Hilary Duff/Samantha Fox entry, I had to look up "Jojo". I downloaded and watched her video for the redunantly-titled "Leave (Get Out)".

Good lord, she looks like she's about five years old playing dress-up. Also, those girls she's hanging with in the video would kick her ass.

Jojo should follow in the footsteps of classic covers such as Britney's "(Can't Get No) Satisfaction", Hilary's "My Generation" and so on, and cover "Get Back" by The Beatles. She could rework the part of the lyrics that include her name and just be so darn cute.

Jeff

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Thursday, October 21, 2004

Crunchy

Signed back up at Crunch this week, started yesterday.

I'll be doing the 12-week program from BODY for LIFE again, starting over. I did Body for Life once before, in 2002, so I'm expecting it will be a pretty smooth process getting back into it!

Finished two pages of SPARK-TOWER WILSON Part 3 today, as well as the lettering for pages 1-8. Going to be doing some more page roughs and at least one more page finished tomorrow during the day.

Jeff

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Wednesday, October 20, 2004

This looks like a good thing

http://www.comixpress.com/

Comics printing, for mini- and full-size comics, with no minimum order.

Mmmmmmmmmm Progressions minicomics with color covers.

Jeff

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Tuesday, October 19, 2004

PROGRESSIONS update 10/19/2004

Had an extremely productive chat with my working partner Stephen Greenwood-Hyde tonight, and we have plenty of irons in the fire.

Work continues apace on SPARK-TOWER WILSON'S SILENT SONG Part 3. This roughly 90-page color story was originally created for the now-defunct web anthology E-volution Comics. Parts 1 and 2 are complete, and I have drawn the first eight pages or so of Part 3 and done layouts for the second eight pages. I'll be inking and coloring several of those this week.

THE DAY THE LORD GOT BUSTED, our 70's blaxploitation story of an avenging priest, has a complete plot outline now. We're crafting it as a film script first, and will be making it into a comic next, and ideally into a novel and film at some point after that.

I've been wanting to work on a screenplay for a while and I have a couple of good opportunities now. Here's the short pitch for BUSTED:

He's come back to his parish after serving ten years in prison for looking the other way. The town is run by the gangsters who framed him, and he's determined to make every last bastard pay--and take over control of the underworld for himself!


We've started discussing plans to relaunch the PROGRESSIONS minicomic, serializing THE ANTON-SAGE MYSTERIES, our high-school teen detective series starring Progressions characters Henry Anton and Pam Sage. It's something like Slam Dunk mixed with Nancy Drew mixed with Jack Hill movies.

We'll be posting it on www.progressions.org as we complete the chapters of the first volume starting next year. The website will be getting an overhaul in the next couple of months as well.

Our story DEATH-BLOW OF THE MIRACLE MASTERS was very well received when appeared as a backup in Rafer Roberts' Plastic Farm. We've got a plot for its sequel, 1001 VICIOUS BLOWS, which we'll be turning into another short story before the end of 2004. No word yet on where it will be appearing, but I'm looking forward to drawing some more kung fu.

We also have the plot outline for the first TALES OF THE EIGHT-LEGGED SAMURAI. This science-fiction/fantasy series about a race of warrior arachnoids will be broader in scope than anything we've done, but each of the individual stories will be pretty grounded and tight. Miyazaki's Nausicaa is a big influence here, as well as the alien races of Edgar Rice Burroughs and the sweeping scale of Tezuka's PHOENIX.

I have another screenplay project underway with my good friend Reed Oliver, but I need to discuss it a bit more with him before making it public and posting about it. Reed's an extremely creative guy and it's been a thrill to be working on something with him.

Jeff

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